Amy Maniatis of Cafepress, wearing an Obama t-shirt from Lekker Politics, was on MSNBC recently talking about the sales of products with Obama, Hillary and McCain. They actually have a really nice Elections 08 Cafepress Meter that shows they sell about three times as many Obama than Hillary.

This morning we saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it was great! I wouldn’t say it was better than Raiders or Crusade, but it was an Indy film through and through. All the elements that made the first three movies so great were there.

Since we got back I’ve been reading a lot of comments and reviews (on boards and social networking sites) of people who think that the movie is a piece garbage and should never have been made. These purists are complaining about the story being unbelievable, has over the top scenes and there being too much CGI. These people should stop whining and enjoy themselves. This is frickin’ Indiana Jones! It’s supposed to be supernatural, over the top and silly!

It is finally May 22nd and the latest Indiana Jones movie is out. We’ve been waiting for this day since Paramount announced the release date more than one year ago. Just twelve more hours and we’re going to see it at Pathé in Amsterdam. There’s a lot of new TV spots and a new featurette on the official website. Here’s the latest TV spot with review quotes and some new clips:

PicLens (www.piclens.com) is one of the coolest browser plug-ins I’ve seen so far. It allows you to watch photos and videos from Google, Yahoo, Flickr, PhotoBucket, SmugMug and DeviantArt in full screen and 3D. It works really fast and it’s a great new way of going through content quickly. What I really like about it is that whenever you start it it shows you the photos or videos from the page that you’re on, so for instance on Flickr you can start it from a photostream, collection, set or search results and the slick PicLens viewer will show only items that are available from that page. It’s available for IE, Firefox and Safari. Check out this cool demo:

We got tickets for the first show on Friday morning. Meanwhile it’s fun watching the videos and photos from the big premiere in Cannes yesterday. I’m trying to not read any spoilers but managed to accidentally read a few anyway. D’oh!

When Ireland banned smoking in all enclosed public spaces in March 2004 it made big news. Critics said that pubs and restaurants would suffer, but the ban has actually been a huge success. Cigarettes sales in pubs dropped by as much as 60%, thousands of smokers quit in the first year and more non-smokers ventured out to the pub. Since Ireland’s success story most other European countries have adopted anti-smoking laws. More »

Yesterday we went to Baarle Nassau to see my cousin Agnes at a pottery demonstration (see below). Baarle is a town in the south of the Netherlands with complicated borders that zig-zag through town. The border situation is the result of a number of complex medieval treaties, agreements, land-swaps and land sales.

Last weekend we drove to the Alsace region in France and visited the area around Strassbourg, especially the Vosges Regional Nature Park in the south and north of this region. We visited the Caves of Han in Belgium, Strassbourg, Kintzheim, Munster, Gérardmer, Épinal and La Petite Pierre.